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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22891381">she carries the things that remind me of who we used to be</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidkidprem/pseuds/cryptidkidprem'>cryptidkidprem</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(it was requited but one of them Died so like), Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Sad Ending, idk it's just Sad that's all, spoilers through mag117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:22:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22891381</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidkidprem/pseuds/cryptidkidprem</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim drops the recorder, slaps a hand over his mouth. He can’t breathe, can barely even think around the ice in his lungs, the daggers in his heart. </p>
<p>At least when he lost Danny he <i>knew</i>. One moment he had a brother, and then the next he didn’t. Simple as that. He lost him, and he grieved — is still grieving, probably. But this is…</p>
<p>This is a kind of grief Tim is entirely unfamiliar with. He lost Sasha <i>a year ago</i> and <i>didn’t even know it</i>. Sasha died, and he wasn’t even allowed to mourn, just had to go on loving something that walked in her shadow with no fucking clue he was even doing it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sasha James/Tim Stoker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>112</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>she carries the things that remind me of who we used to be</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>on day, because i like to see myself suffer, i was like 'what if tim was in love with sasha before she got not sashad' and then 24 hours later this happened. </p>
<p>dedicated to everyone in the horny for worms chat. thanks for convincing me to use my powers for evil xx</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">When the world ends a little bit for Tim Stoker, he doesn’t even notice it happening.</p>
<p class="p1">When Tim gets back from lunch, there’s a recorder on the floor.</p>
<p class="p1">The way Jon gets with his things, especially his statements and his recordings and all his blah blah blah Archivist Things, Tim makes a note to tease him about it when he gets back.</p>
<p class="p1">He snags it, messes around with the buttons. “This thing still working?” He asks himself, and hears an affirmative click. “Ah, okay. What are you doing on the floor?” He grins, puts on his best Serious Jon Impression. “Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding <em>sinister happenings</em> in the downtown ol—”</p>
<p class="p1">And then there’s— a crash, and some kind of wet sound Tim can’t immediately identify, and Sasha’s shouting at him.</p>
<p class="p1">(Later he’ll wish he paid more attention to her. He’ll wish he hadn’t let her go, that he’d followed her to Elias’s office, that he’d done <em>literally</em> <em>anything</em> <em>else. </em>Later he’ll wish a lot of things, but in the moment he’s too startled to do much of anything.)</p>
<p class="p1">Tim turns, and she’s there. Tim’s never understood the ‘heart in your throat’ metaphor until he sees the fear on Sasha’s face.</p>
<p class="p1">Something inside him <em>lurches</em>. “Sasha?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Behind you!” She shouts. “<em>Run!</em>”</p>
<p class="p1">Somehow, half of him had thought Jane Prentiss wasn’t really real. He’s been dealing with her icky little <em>worms</em> for weeks, but seeing her alive and in the… <em>flesh</em> is like waking from a dream because someone’s sloshed ice water all over your face.</p>
<p class="p1">He can’t move, but Sasha shouts his name again. She shoves him over, knocks him to the ground.</p>
<p class="p1">For a moment there, the only thing that gets through to him is Sasha’s palm, warm and solid on his arm.</p>
<p class="p1">She saves him with that touch. It jolts him out of his shock, gets him moving, gets him away from Prentiss.</p>
<p class="p1">It’s there and gone in under a second, but that feeling, it lingers.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">In the tunnels under the Institute, Tim makes a promise with himself.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s loopy on oxygen deprivation, carrying a fire extinguisher, and running for his life from honest-to-God <em>evil worms</em>. He has no clue if anyone else is alive, or if Jane got to them. He doesn’t know what happened to Martin, or Jon, or—</p>
<p class="p1">(He pictures Sasha’s face for what he doesn’t know is the last time. He pictures her eyes, wild, panicked. He pictures her making a mad dash for the door, escaping.)</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t know where Sasha is. He doesn’t even know if she made it, if she’s still <em>alive</em>. He stumbles, briefly, throws one of his arms to steady himself, squashes a single stray worm under his shoe.</p>
<p class="p1">Breathing heavily, he leans against the wall. He holds up the CO2, but the worms are fewer and farther between down here, so he gives himself a moment to catch his breath.</p>
<p class="p1">“Okay,” he says, “okay. Yeah, that’s enough. I get it, universe, loud and clear. If I survive this— if <em>we</em> survive this— I’ll tell her, alright?”</p>
<p class="p1">No one answers him.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">Tim doesn’t tell her.</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t know why, but after he and Jon make it out of the tunnels, after Bouchard and the ECDC drag them out of the archives, after he gets a thorough decontamination and a stern talking to from some blokes in hazmat suits, it just slides from his mind.</p>
<p class="p1">He sees Sasha; he looks into her eyes, grinning and half-delirious on carbon dioxide and the special adrenaline high that comes from surviving something almost unsurvivable, and he just doesn’t say anything. It’s almost like the thought falls out of his brain.</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t think about it until he’s safely back in his flat, showered in his own shower, sprawled out alone on his own bed.</p>
<p class="p1">“<em>Oh</em>. Fuck,” Tim announces to his ceiling fan, clapping his bandaged hands over his eyes. “Bloody <em>coward</em>.”</p>
<p class="p1">He rationalizes it to himself really well.</p>
<p class="p1">Maybe it’s for the best. If Tim had popped out of the tunnels, bleeding and dizzy and crazed, and just said <em>Hey, Sasha, by the way, I’m totally, head over heals, over the fucking moon in love with you</em>, she might’ve gotten the wrong idea. It might’ve seemed like he was only saying it <em>because</em> he was bleeding and dizzy and crazed, and not because he meant it. It would’ve been a lot to put on her shoulders after everything with Prentiss.</p>
<p class="p1">So maybe his own cowardice works out for them both: now he has time to figure out how to do this right. He can get his shit together, maybe show Sasha that he’s the type of guy worth her time, worth her love.</p>
<p class="p1">He can… he can be a fucking gentleman about the whole thing.</p>
<p class="p1">He feels a little giddy; he’s not… the best at relationships. Sure he’s a bit of a flirt, but when things get serious it freaks him out a bit. He’s not so good at letting other people know him under all the confidence he projects to cover his darker bits.</p>
<p class="p1">This, though… Sasha’s someone worth making an effort for, and the idea of really going for it, taking her out for nice dinners and walks in the park and buying her cheesy gifts on Valentine’s and, maybe even getting to wake up beside her, if he’s really lucky, makes his heart do funny, snoopy things in his chest.</p>
<p class="p1">He rolls over, hides a goofy grin in his pillow.</p>
<p class="p1">Maybe he spent the day running from actual evil worms, but he can’t even find it in himself to be scared when all he can think about is Sasha’s face.</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">Tim can’t pinpoint the moment things change with Sasha.</p>
<p class="p1">Maybe there isn’t one single <em>Moment</em>, maybe things just kind of snowball, straws pile up, whatever, insert metaphor here.</p>
<p class="p1">All he knows is that something has changed, that Sasha’s treating him differently, putting distance between them.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim’s pretty sure things were okay until the Prentiss thing. They’d grabbed chips after work just a few days before the attack, and Sasha had laughed so hard at one of his stupid jokes she’d almost choked on her food.</p>
<p class="p1">And thing’s aren’t… It’s not like she’s avoiding him, or giving him any kind of cold shoulder. She talks to him, she works with him, she’s perfectly amenable and friendly.</p>
<p class="p1">But there’s something underneath it, a microscopic shift in the tectonic plates of their relationship.</p>
<p class="p1">See, they weren’t <em>friendly</em> and <em>amenable</em> with each other before. They were bitchy and pushy and unashamed around each other. They were <em>friends</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">That optimism Tim had felt immediately after the Prentiss thing fades. He stops thinking about when he should tell Sasha, and starts wondering if he should at all.</p>
<p class="p1">He starts to wonder what he did wrong. He spends most of his nights raking over every one of their interactions, looking for something he’d said, something he’d done, that might’ve made Sasha realize he’s not really worth her time.</p>
<p class="p1">Maybe she’s just finally decided he’s more effort than he’s worth. Maybe she’s just sick of waiting around for him to stop being such a chicken.</p>
<p class="p1">Because, because…</p>
<p class="p1">Because the thing is, before all this, Tim was starting to think — he was pretty sure, almost positive, even — that this thing wasn’t one sided.</p>
<p class="p1">For a minute there, Sasha had loved him back, and Tim…</p>
<p class="p1">Tim had gone and ruined it somehow. Been too sacred of losing her friendship that he’d somehow gone and ruined their friendship anyway!</p>
<p class="p1">If only he could figure out what he did, maybe he could try and mend things. Even if Sasha’s not interested in taking things further, it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p class="p1">He’d give anything to have his friend back, to have things go back to how they were.</p>
<p class="p1">He just misses her.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">It takes a few weeks for Tim to break.</p>
<p class="p1">He catches up with Sasha as they’re leaving the Institute for lunch. Well, as <em>Sasha’s</em> leaving for lunch. Truth be told Tim brought his own lunch today, but he’d seen Sasha getting ready to leave, seen her pulling on a scarf that <em>he’d</em> given her, months ago, and something in him had finally snapped.</p>
<p class="p1">“Sasha!” He calls, following her outside and jogging over to her.</p>
<p class="p1">She stops on the sidewalk a few yards away, turns, waits until Tim’s caught up with her. “What’s up, Tim?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I just…” He trails off, takes a moment to gather his thoughts up. He’s never been very good at this; the stuff that’s real. Ever since Danny, he’s developed an excellent talent for avoidance, wrapping anything serious up in humor and a cocky confidence he’s spent years getting right. “Look, I just wanted to. To talk. To check in, I guess?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh,” Sasha says, with a look of mildest surprise. “Alright.”</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Ouch</em>. So it’s gonna be like that? Alright, maybe that’s fair. But he still has to try. He promised the bloody universe, didn’t he? “Have I done something, Sasha?”</p>
<p class="p1">She blinks, but her expression doesn’t change. “Done something? What do you mean?”</p>
<p class="p1">He laughs, a little hysterical. “You’re gonna make me say it, huh?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Tim,” she says, and she really does look confused. She’s always pushed him; that’s one of the things he loves about her, so why is it making his guts twist unpleasantly now?</p>
<p class="p1">Tim sighs. “I mean… Y’know… I guess I just feel like. Like things are different, now? Between us, I mean.”</p>
<p class="p1">Sasha hums thoughtfully. “Are they? I hadn’t noticed anything.”</p>
<p class="p1">Okay. That’s a bit much, he thinks, but he smothers the flicker of annoyance. He’s trying to make things right; if he’s fucked things up with Sasha, he can grovel a bit to get things back to normal.</p>
<p class="p1">He swallows. He’s gonna have to really say it, now. All this time, all the psyching himself up, and it still makes his palms sweat, makes his heartbeat pick up a little.</p>
<p class="p1">“Well… I suppose I figured. I mean, I’d hoped, you and I, might— I-I guess I just thought—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Thought <em>what</em>, Tim?” She interrupts, and there’s no mistaking that tone.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim’s jaw snaps shut. He inhales sharply, lets it out slowly. “Ah. Right. Okay.”</p>
<p class="p1">They stand there, facing each other on the sidewalk outside the Institute. Tim meets Sasha’s eyes, and neither of them say anything for almost a full, agonizing minute.</p>
<p class="p1">“Is that all, Tim? Anything else?”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim bites his tongue, stuffs his hands in his pockets, suddenly feeling very small. “Guess not,” he tells her.</p>
<p class="p1">“Okay, right. Well, I’m a bit late to meet my boyfriend, so—” She gestures over her shoulder. <em>Boyfriend</em>. That’s <em>new</em>. “I’ll see you after lunch, Tim.”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim nods, robotic and jerky, like his body’s on autopilot. He puts on his best approximation of his usual, cheeky smile. “Sure, yeah, sure. See you later, Sash.”</p>
<p class="p1">She smiles faintly at him. “Bye,” she says, giving an awkward little wave and walking away, taking Tim’s heart with her when she goes.</p>
<p class="p1">Okay.</p>
<p class="p1">Okay, yeah, Tim took long enough to get his shit together, it’s fair enough that he get shot down, maybe. What did he expect? That she would just, what? Wait for him? Sit around twiddling her thumbs while he fucked around and tried to build up the courage to be a grown up about his feelings?</p>
<p class="p1">No, she’s a person with her own life and her own heart, and Tim missed his chance.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim watches Sasha walk away until she vanishes into the crowd. He hopes, whoever this guy she’s seeing now is, that he makes her happy where Tim never managed it. Someone to make the good things in life outweigh the bad.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">“If I showed you a picture of the <em>real</em> Sasha now, you’d have no idea who it was,” Elias says, in that cold, measured tone.</p>
<p class="p1">Funny how calm he sounds, as he tears the foundation out from under Tim’s feet, shakes his word down to his hot, terrified core.</p>
<p class="p1">Something that used to be bright and golden inside of Tim shifts, sinks, becomes hard and ugly.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">“You knew, then?”</p>
<p class="p1">Melanie turns away from the statement she’s doing research for, blinks over at Tim. “Huh?”</p>
<p class="p1">“You—” He takes a breath. “They said… Jon said you spotted her. You knew Sasha wasn’t. You knew that thing wasn’t really Sasha.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh,” Melanie says, “<em>oh</em>. Yeah, um— Yeah. I knew.”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim nods. He swallows down the uncomfortable lump in his throat, but it doesn’t seem to want to budge. “Do you… Do you remember what she looked like?”</p>
<p class="p1">Melanie can’t hide the shock on her face, the way her cheeks go a little pink, and her eyes go a little sad. It’s fine; Tim’s set his pride aside for now, and he’s okay with being pitied a little bit. “She— um. Yeah.” Melanie sucks in her cheeks. “Should I—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Please. Tell me?”</p>
<p class="p1">Melanie nods. “She was, I dunno. She looked <em>sweet</em>. And, and short. Bit shorter than me. Her hair was long, kinda of dark— not as dark as. Well, the— you know, and she wore glasses. I think her eyes were brown, but. I didn’t. I’m sorry, I never looked too closely.” She does sound genuinely sorry; like she’d give Tim more if she could, even though she hasn’t been here long and Tim’s spent most of that time being fairly horrid to her for things she really can’t control. “We only met the once.”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim nods stiffly. “Right,” he says, “thanks, Melanie. Really.”</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1"><em>Click</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“I went back over to the calliope, there was—“</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“I thought it was pronounced ‘kal-ee-oh-pee’?”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">Tim’s breath catches.</p>
<p class="p1">He clicks the recording off again, breathing like he’s just run a mile.</p>
<p class="p1">It’s late, and Tim is alone in the archives. He didn’t even bother to make an excuse, he just hung back and waited for everyone to leave. For some reason this feels easier to deal with here than it would at his own flat.</p>
<p class="p1">Jon gave him the tapes a few days ago. The tapes with—</p>
<p class="p1">The tapes you can still hear her voice on. Her <em>real</em> voice, a voice that Tim— he can’t remember it but he— it’s like there’s a fishhook in his heart, trying to pull it upwards. He can still remember that heart-in-his-throat feeling he got when Sasha looked at him, months ago, when she saved him from Prentiss.</p>
<p class="p1">Only now it’s like — when he pictures her face, he can’t make the voice on this tape line up with what he remembers Sasha sounding like.</p>
<p class="p1">He can remember the heart-in-his-throat feeling, but the face he pictures isn’t a face that makes him feel it. When he pictures h— that, <em>it</em>, the thing he thought was the woman he loved— loves. <em>Loves</em>,present tense. He still bloody loves her, somewhere, he knows it, even if something in him knows it doesn’t feel right — it just feels like… static. It feels flat.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim looks at the recorder he’s holding.</p>
<p class="p1">His hands shake.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Click</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“Sasha? You’re back early. I thou—”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">Tim hits fast forward, skips past Jon’s voice. Can’t quite stand to hear that right now.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>“Tried and succeeded,”</em> Sasha (<em>it’s Sasha</em>, Tim tells himself.<em> This is Sasha, </em>this is her, not the voice his head produces when he thinks of Sasha.) says on the tape, and she sounds so… cheerful.</p>
<p class="p1">She sounds proud of herself, and he can — almost — imagine a smile to go along with this voice. It makes him feel like he’s wearing the wrong skin, but that’s almost better than trying to imagine the monster smiling along to these words.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“They were actually quite helpful.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“Oh… well. Good work.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1"><em>“So,” </em>Sasha chirps, <em>“do we know if it’s pronounced </em>kal-ee-oh-pee<em> or</em> kuh-lie-uh-pee<em>?”</em></p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Click.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">Tim chokes, not on his heart, but around a sob he hadn’t even noticed building up in his throat.</p>
<p class="p1">Something inside him burns.</p>
<p class="p1">He rewinds the tape.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Click.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“I thought it was pronounced ‘kal-ee-oh-pee’?”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Click.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">Tim drops the recorder, slaps a hand over his mouth. He can’t breathe, can barely even think around the ice in his lungs, the daggers in his heart.</p>
<p class="p1">At least when he lost Danny he <em>knew</em>. One moment he had a brother, and then the next he didn’t. Simple as that. He lost him, and he grieved — is still grieving, probably. But this is…</p>
<p class="p1">This is a kind of grief Tim is entirely unfamiliar with. He lost Sasha <em>a year ago</em> and <em>didn’t even know it</em>. Sasha died, and he wasn’t even allowed to mourn, just had to go on loving something that walked in her shadow with no fucking clue he was even doing it.</p>
<p class="p1">And now. Now he can’t even properly picture her face, can’t even remember <em>who he fucking lost!</em></p>
<p class="p1">He wants to take the tape recorder and smash it into bits, but he can’t seem to manage it. These tapes… These few fragments of her voice… This is all there is left of her.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim pulls his legs up close to his chest, buries his face in his arms, and doesn’t stop crying for a really long time.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">The thing is, Tim still has all these <em>memories</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t know exactly when Sasha became Not Sasha, but when he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure he can pick out which memories are her and which aren’t.</p>
<p class="p1">According to Elias, Sasha was— was taken during the Prentiss attack, and when Tim thinks about her Before, things feel… wrong. It’s like Not Them had to superimpose an image of itself over the real Sasha in his mind, and when he thinks about it too hard, her face feels… static, flat, where it’s been replaced.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks of Sasha, before, and how she made him feel.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks about sitting with Sasha a few years back, spending an hour scrolling through website after website searching for the ugliest possible sweaters to wear to the Institute’s annual holiday party.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers, distinctly, the look of pure disdain on Elias’s face when he and Sasha had turned up in them, how they’d both fought to keep a straight face in front of him and then dissolved into a fit of silent giggles and hissed teasing the second his back was turned.</p>
<p class="p1">(He still has the sweater, buried somewhere in the back of his closet. He’s not sure what Sasha did with hers.)</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks of the time they’d gone out for drinks together, their first week as Jon’s assistants. They’d gotten completely pissed, and done drunken karaoke together until they were both laughing too hard to keep singing. He remembers looking at her face, and he remembers feeling something big and bright expand in his chest, right under his ribcage.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers collapsing back into their booth together, giggling and teasing and jostling each other. He remembers looking at her, realizing they were much closer than he’d anticipated.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers how soft Sasha’s face was when he’d reached ouch, tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears, his fingertips grazing her cheek.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks of investigating cases with her and Martin. He remembers getting some kind of virus on his hard drive that had all but locked him out of his files. It was his personal computer, he used it for everything, so it’d seemed so earth-shattering back then.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers Sasha staying back at the institute with him ‘till nearly midnight to try and fix it, crammed in front of his desk while Tim paced, irritated and anxious, behind her.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers her shooing him away every time he poked his nose over her shoulder, even going so far as to whack him on the nose with a rolled up statement. That had… that had eased his nerves, a bit, he remembers. If she was so calm that she was teasing him, it must not be the end of the world, it must be salvageable.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers the relief he’d felt when she’d stood up and declared the issue solved, and herself a total genius. He remembers the gratitude he’d felt for her, grinning at her like mad pulling her into a fierce hug.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers saying, “Oh, shit, Sash, I owe you one, seriously,” and kissing her quickly on the cheek before he could think better of it.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks about the day Martin barged back into the Institute ranting about worms. Tim remembers sitting with him and Sasha in the breakroom, while Sasha, for once, made <em>Martin</em> tea, and they both tried to soothe him.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers not entirely wanting to leave Martin alone that night, with only <em>Jon</em> and the statements for company, but Martin had insisted. He remembers grabbing a pint with Sasha, because neither of them quite wanted to be alone themselves.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers half-expecting to see Prentiss looming out of every alleyway they passed, and Sasha had picked up on his nerves after the umpteenth time he checked over his shoulder. She’d thrown her hands up with a dramatic “Boo!” in her most menacing voice, and he remembers how he’d actually <em>jumped</em> away from her, yelping in surprise.</p>
<p class="p1">She’d laughed so hard they had to stop in the middle of the sidewalk outside the pub while she doubled over her knees, tears gathering in her eyes.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers a pint becoming two, and then three, and then he kind of lost count.</p>
<p class="p1">Most of all, he remembers splitting a taxi with her, just to make sure she got home safe. He remembers the way she’d lingered, the cab idling outside her flat.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers, even through the alcohol and the nerves, the way she’d said, “see ya, Stoker,” and kissed him goodnight, right on the lips, before popping out of the cab and dashing up to her door.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks of countless late nights and inside jokes, talking her ear off about Smirke back in the early days. He thinks of telling her about Danny, thinks of sitting with her after the Michael incident, how she’d let him put his arm around her shoulders with only a minimum of eye rolling. He remembers the way she would pull at the ends of her hair when she got really stressed.</p>
<p class="p1">And when he thinks of all this, Not Sasha stares back at him out of all these memories, blank and horribly static.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">Tim’s holding a polaroid.</p>
<p class="p1">Melanie gave it to him, a few days ago, after finding it swept under the sofa in the breakroom by the kitchenette when she’d bent to retrieve a dropped sugar pack for her coffee.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim remembers this photo. It was taken on New Years, 2015. Not New Year’s Eve, when Tim had gone out to a party with some of his friends from uni — God, remember when he had <em>friends</em>? When he knew people outside the Institute? When he had a <em>life</em>? — but January 1st, 2015.</p>
<p class="p1">Sasha’d been blown off by some guy she’d been talking to the night before, so she’d rang him up, pulled him out of bed, demanded he take her out for pastries and coffee.</p>
<p class="p1">And Tim had, because it was Sasha. Even with a pounding hangover, he’d showered, got dressed, and taken the tube across town to meet Sasha at that pretentious coffee shop she always liked. (Later, she’d meet Michael there, and stop liking it so much, but this was before.)</p>
<p class="p1">Sasha’d gotten an old polaroid camera from one of her mates for Christmas that year, and she was on some kick about making good memories. It was her resolution, he remembers: remembering the good bits of the year, so the bad bits didn’t feel so heavy.</p>
<p class="p1">So she’d snagged Tim, before they left, right outside the shop. She’d roped some passing businessman in a suit that probably cost more than a month of Tim’s salary into snapping a photo of the two of them, outside the shop.</p>
<p class="p1">The photo’s a little blurry, but it is undeniably real</p>
<p class="p1">There’s Sasha, with her arm around Tim’s shoulders so she can pull him down to her level. (She’s shorter than her imposter. It looks like Tim’s got nearly a full foot on her.) Tim’s making a face, and he’s holding up bunny ears behind Sasha’s beaming, smiling face.</p>
<p class="p1">Elias was right: Tim doesn’t have any idea who this woman is. He tries to line up the face in the photo with the memories he has of Sasha. It feels painful, like there’s bees under his skin, but it feels… It feels right, oddly enough.</p>
<p class="p1">What really gets him is how happy they look, carefree and silly like Tim hasn’t felt in— in he can’t remember how long, now.</p>
<p class="p1">He looks at this woman. She’s wearing wireframe glasses, and a crooked, carefree grin. Her face is round, freckles smattered over light brown skin, wavy, chaotic brown hair frames her face, hangs down to her shoulders, and he <em>can’t</em> <em>remember her</em>, but it’s like… it’s almost like his heart can remember <em>loving</em> her, buried somewhere deep under cement and plaster.</p>
<p class="p1">Tim’s eyes sting, but there’s no real tears there this time.</p>
<p class="p1">What he feels now is like the ghost of grief, and that’s almost worse. Maybe if he could remember her, he could mourn, properly, but instead all he gets is, is confusion, and <em>anger</em>, and so many questions no one will ever be able to answer.</p>
<p class="p1">Swallowing down a lump in his throat, Tim stands, walks over to Martin’s desk.</p>
<p class="p1">“Hey, Martin,” he says.</p>
<p class="p1">Martin swivels, blinks up at him. “Hey, Tim,” he says cautiously.</p>
<p class="p1">“Will you…” He holds out the photo. “Well you look after this for me?”</p>
<p class="p1">Martin looks down at the photo, and his eyes go a little wide. “O-oh. Are you, are you sure, Tim? You don’t want to… hang onto it?”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim shakes his head. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, with all this, this Unknowing crap. Can you just keep it safe, ‘till everything’s over? If I don’t—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Tim—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Martin, <em>don’t</em>. This is dangerous, let’s not pretend otherwise. Just. Keep it safe, please.”</p>
<p class="p1">Martin inhales sharply, nodding slowly on the exhale. “Alright.” He takes the photo from Tim, holding it like it’s a bomb about to go off, or some ancient holy text. “Yeah, ‘course. Whatever you want.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Thanks,” Tim says.</p>
<p class="p1">“No problem.”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim bites the inside of his cheek, runs a hand through his hair. He gives Martin one last look, and then, feeling wild and hopeless and angry, he turns on his heels and walks away.</p>
<p class="p2"> </p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1"> </p>
<p class="p1">“From what I can tell,” Tim says, the sound of tape unspooling grating on his nerves, “there’s only one person who’s ever managed to hurt them — to <em>really</em> hurt them, and that’s Gertrude Robinson.”</p>
<p class="p1">He’s been thinking a lot, lately, and none of it’s been good. These… <em>things</em>, whatever the hell they are, they’ve hurt him plenty. They took Danny, and then they took Sasha, and they left him here to hurt and mourn ineffectually and wonder <em>why</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">Well, not anymore.</p>
<p class="p1">“She was cold,” he goes on, throat tight with every scrap of anger and pain that’s been building up inside him ever since Danny died. “Ruthless. She hit them when they were vulnerable, and she sacrificed a lot of people to do it. Honestly, I hope that Jon learned something from her, because—”</p>
<p class="p1">He’s not just going to sit here and watch anyone else he loves get hurt, even if it’s just because he’s not around to see it anymore.</p>
<p class="p1">“— Because I don’t expect I’m going to be coming back from this. I don’t know if I want to. And if he needs to pull the trigger, to <em>use me</em> to stop it…”</p>
<p class="p1">He looks up, sees Melanie’s empty desk. That used to be Sasha’s desk, way back when. Tim remembers sitting on the edge of it, pestering Sasha until she would sigh and look up at him with a fond smile and ask him, in her most put upon voice, what he needed.</p>
<p class="p1">“Well. He’d better have the guts to do it.”</p>
<p class="p1">Tim closes his eyes.</p>
<p class="p1">“Timothy Stoker. August fourth, two-thousand-seventeen.” He chokes around a laugh. “<em>Statement ends.</em>”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cannot BELIEVE my first tma fic is so SAD. i've never written anything properly angsty in my goddamn LIFE. title comes from 'all alone' by fun, which is a timsasha song.</p>
<p>anyway. thanks for reading, hope u liked it :~) pls feel free to come hmu on tumblr @ <a href="https://lovesickcrowley.tumblr.com/">lovesickcrowley</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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